The sun is just beginning to rise over the farm fields of the Herscher school district, 70 miles southwest of Chicago, but the youngest passengers on Bus 24 are already buzzing with excitement.
The second, third and fourth graders climb aboard right on schedule — many decked out in holiday sweaters — and clamor for permission to sing Christmas carols.
When bus driver Chris Hadley reminds them that they’re just days from their winter vacation, they respond with resounding cheers.
But the children reserve some of their greatest enthusiasm for a less obvious crowd-pleaser: What, Hadley asks, do they think of their new electric school bus?
“I love it!”
“I looove it!”
“Brilliant!”
The Herscher district, with 25 full-sized electric school buses on the road, is a clean bus leader in Illinois and part of a growing trend fueled by $5 billion in federal funding.
School districts across the country have committed to about 14,000 electric school buses, either by obtaining grant money, ordering buses or putting buses on the road, according to the Electric School Bus Initiative.
And most of the increase has occurred in the last three years.
“It’s just been a phenomenal climb,” said Electric School Bus Initiative Director Sue Gander.
Illinois is third in the country for electric school buses, behind California and New York, with the state’s school districts committing to about 700 school buses, more than 200 of which are already on the road, according to Gander.
Supporters say that electric buses protect kids and communities from exposure to diesel exhaust, which can lead to asthma and respiratory illnesses and worsen existing heart and lung disease, especially in children and the elderly, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
A recent study by the Harvard School of Public Health estimated that in 2017, U.S. school buses were responsible for 170 pollution-related deaths, as well as 280 new childhood asthma cases.
Switching to electric buses would reduce the number of deaths to seven per year, and the new asthma cases to 12, the authors estimated.
Today, electric buses face some new headwinds, including uncertainty about whether President-elect Donald Trump will try to scale back federal support.
And in Illinois there’s a more immediate concern: the recent announcements by the Quebec-based electric school bus manufacturer Lion Electric that it is suspending operations at its Channahon plant and has obtained creditor protection.
The Lion announcement has raised concerns about access to maintenance and parts in districts that have purchased the company’s buses, including Herscher.
Still, Herscher schools Superintendent Rich Decman continues to see electric school buses as the wave of the future — and to say that trying at least one is a “no-brainer” for districts that obtain federal funding.
“We are at the point where the knowledge, the experience, and the exposure is such that things could go really well” for electric buses, said Susan Mudd, a senior policy advocate at the Environmental Law and Policy Center.
“Manufacturers will tell you that electric is the future. (That) doesn’t mean they’re actually all equally committed to making it happen in short order, but it’s definitely the way things are going.”
Humble beginnings
In 2017, environmentalists wanted to send an electric school bus on a six-stop, four-state tour of the Midwest.
“Here’s the irony,” said Mudd, who helped organize the effort. “There were so few charging stations that we had to raise the money to pay for a truck to haul the bus between the six locations.”
And yes, she said, that truck ran on diesel.
With efforts such as the electric school bus tour, Midwestern environmentalists helped push Illinois, Michigan, Ohio and Indiana to allocate a combined $20 million from the Volkswagon emissions-scandal settlement toward electric school buses.
Local advocates also joined environmentalists across the country in working toward federal legislation.
Their big win came with the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which set aside $5 billion in Clean Bus Program funding for electric school buses.
The Clean Bus Program, which prioritizes rural, low-income and tribal school districts, helped shape the growth of electric buses in Illinois, where rural districts such as Herscher and Williamsfield established early footholds.
Herscher applied for Clean Bus funding in 2022, after receiving encouragement from Lion.
When the results were announced, the sprawling 1,800-student district — spread out over 250 square miles — got almost $10 million for electric buses and charging stations.
“We were shocked,” Decman said. “It was like winning the lottery.”
The Clean Bus Program covered the cost of Herscher’s 25 electric buses, priced at about $375,000 each, and provided $450,000 for chargers and related infrastructure.
In addition, the district was able to sell the buses it replaced, and expects to save $6,000 to $9,000 annually per bus on maintenance and fuel.
Chicago suffered an early setback when it wasn’t granted priority status in the first round of Clean Bus Program funding, according to Mudd. The district has since received funding for up to 50 electric school buses, with none yet on the road.
Today, a map of electric school bus adoption in Illinois shows bus commitments spread out over much of the state, including more conservative areas where electric vehicles are controversial.
Herscher, for instance, is located in Kankakee County, where Trump got 60% of the vote in November and Vice President Kamala Harris received 39%, according to NBC News.
“I do have some community members that, frankly, are not nice” when it comes to this issue, Decman said with a laugh. “I don’t know what else to say. They are not nice to me and have nothing good to say about me.”
Still, he said, students are excited and most parents have been supportive.
“I think there’s a silent majority that recognize it’s coming,” he said of electric buses.
Handling the cold
It’s mid-December, but Herscher’s Bus 24 is warm enough for kids to shed their coats.
The ride is comfortable, the noise is minimal and the air in the bus smells fresh, with no hint of exhaust.
“I love driving it,” said Hadley, 74, who has been driving buses for 20 years, in a career that has included ferrying the Seattle Mariners’ Single-A team.
Electric school buses do have some limitations. The range for the ones in Herscher’s fleet is 125 miles — long enough for a bus to easily do two daily routes of no more than about 50 miles each, but not long enough for field trips and many extracurricular events.
Herscher has retained diesel buses for those jobs, and Decman hopes that as other districts get electric buses and install and share quick chargers, longer journeys will become possible.
Detractors often raise questions about cold weather performance, but former Williamsfield schools Superintendent Tim Farquer said that during cold stretches last winter, some neighboring districts experienced issues with their diesel bus engines “gumming up,” while Williamsfield’s electric buses ran without problems.
Decman recalled that on one extremely cold day, his district’s diesel buses experienced problems with their fuel thickening and those buses didn’t run, but the electric buses did.
“I’m not saying there aren’t problems on the electric buses; there are,” Decman said. “But we have had just as many problems with our (diesel) buses.”
Batteries on wheels
In the growing light of Bus 24, the children chatter happily, sending whisps of conversation wafting through the air: “I’m famous!” … “In two years she will be my age!”
“What are we going to sing today?” Hadley asks.
The selections include a rousing rendition of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” complete with percussion (a boy keeping time by clapping loudly), and add-on lyrics:
“Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer (Reindeer!), had a very shiny nose (Like a light bulb!), and if you ever saw it (Saw it!) you would even say it glows (Like a flashlight!) …”
Whether electric school buses will increasingly be the backdrop for such scenes depends on a number of factors, and supporters do see potential speed bumps, including Trump’s vows to roll back government support of electric vehicles.
Still, the first $3 billion of the Clean Bus Program funding has already been awarded, Mudd noted.
And the Clean Bus Program may be less vulnerable than other initiatives because it comes from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, as opposed to President Joe Biden’s signature climate legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, she said.
Trump has been highly critical of Biden’s climate initiatives, and last month Reuters reported that the president-elect’s transition team will try to kill a Biden electric vehicle tax credit of up to $7,500.
“We honestly don’t know how at risk the (clean bus) funds are,” said Mudd. “It’s an electric vehicle program, but it’s also a clean air program, and many of those who say they’re not in favor of electric vehicles also claim to want clean air.”
Lion’s financial struggles have created a different kind of uncertainty, with Decman saying he has major concerns regarding the company’s ability to provide parts and maintenance and help with warranty issues.
In a written statement, Lion responded that at this stage, the company “is not being liquidated, but is rather undertaking various restructuring measures, including a sale and investment solicitation process, in a stable and structured environment.”
“Lion will continue to assist its customers with maintenance and servicing of their vehicles and honor vehicle warranties,” the statement said.
Decman said he is “very hopeful” that the situation can be resolved in a way that works well for Herscher.
“There’s no perfect transportation mode, but I happen to think that this one — if most of the kinks get worked out — seems to be more positive than current (internal combustion engine) buses,” he said.
Farquer, now the superintendent at Mercer County Schools, noted that the traditional big-three school bus manufacturers in North America — Blue Bird, Thomas and IC Bus — all have electric models on the road.
Georgia-based Blue Bird reports it produced and delivered more than 700 electric buses in fiscal year 2024, up nearly 30% from 2023.
Farquer, who leads the Bus2Grid school bus electrification initiative, also sees potential for electric school buses — with their big batteries — to act as sources of emergency power and energy storage.
With the right charging equipment, an electric school bus could pull up and help power a nursing home during an outage, or allow people to charge their cellphones at an emergency shelter, he said.
School bus batteries can also be used to store energy from the grid when it’s cheap, so it can be used later — perhaps to help power a school building. That can save a district money and ease pressure on the electric grid at times of peak demand.
Such projects are already in the works in Illinois, and Farquer said he thinks the state will start seeing real-life examples in 2025.
“You can use your school bus batteries in a way that supports your building, your community and the grid at large — (and) you get a better return on that investment,” he said.
nschoenberg@chicagotribune.com
